Prayer: “A Prayer for Cleansing the Temple of Our Soul” By Caryll Houselander

Father, do not let me find consolation
in sensible devotion to the person of Jesus Christ
while Jesus Christ passes me by unrecognized, unknown,
unsought, uncomforted on the Via Crucis we travel together.

Do not let my heart by moved by pity
for the painted Christ on the wall
while it remains a stone, hard, insensitive
to the Christ suffering alone in the ugliness of shame
and disgrace of the outcast, the shunned, the forgotten;

in mental sufferers hidden away in hospitals,
in prisoners serving life sentences,
in people wrestling with bitterness and despair;
in those fighting a losing fight with human weakness
and degradation – in the unhelped, the uncomforted, the unloved.

Do not give me tears to shed at the feet of the crucifix
while they blind me to Christ crucified,
unwept for in the souls of sinners and in my own sinful soul.